The below is satire. As in, not true. Because some people will think it’s true. So we need to say that it’s satire. What is it? Satire.
Despite media claims to the contrary, Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe did not yell at visiting British billionaire Charles Windsor at a Parliament House event in Canberra yesterday. There was no such event; Windsor is not even in Australia, let alone Canberra. Like the entire “royal tour”, footage of the event and of Senator Thorpe yelling was AI-generated by the media, with the goal of stimulating as much audience attention as possible.
The “Thorpe yells at king” idea was devised as the perfect story for outlets of all ideological persuasions — a crucial requirements given the expense required to produced lifelike images of the senator yelling at the British monarch in Parliament House. The far-right Sydney Telegraph used it for an item titled “‘Raging’ Thorpe a royal nuisance”, claiming that “Ms (sic) Thorpe shocked dignitaries by turning her back on the king”. In its entertainment section, the right-wing Herald Sun reported that “senior members of the Liberal party are now considering a censure motion against Ms Thorpe”. Nine’s David Crowe reported ominously that “the protest was greeted with silence from hundreds of guests”.
As of writing, Guardian Australia is up to its eighth piece on Thorpe, including one outlining how her protest brought “her face to face with her long-term adversary: the British monarchy”. Sky News Australia, meanwhile, reported that Thorpe had been “schooled” by lawyers who pointed out that Thorpe’s claim that Windsor was “not her king” was in fact not correct, and that Windsor was indeed Thorpe’s king whether she liked it or not, then reported earnestly on the reaction to Thorpe from the UK media.
The media can reflect on a job well done, with something for every reader and viewer from the most froth-mouthed geriatric right-winger to Blak sovereignty supporters, and without the actual cost of staging a royal visit to Canberra. All footage being computer-generated by AI systems trained on decades of news reports of royal visits, and several years of attention-seeking by Thorpe and other obscure members of the Senate.
It’s also a welcome triumph after an earlier plan to create footage of Windsor attending prominent Sydney horse torture event The Everest fell through due to technical difficulties. Based on months of preparations, the Telegraph had reported as fact that Windsor would attend the event, as did horse torture industry publications. There was some bad blood in the media after time ran out to produce the footage, and dozens of stories about Windsor “putting the ‘royal’ into ‘Royal Randwick'” had to be spiked. But it was all smiles yesterday as the media celebrated a surge in clicks and views off the back of angry racists and earnest progressives.
The result was all the more impressive given Windsor and his wife are not even in the country, but remain at home in the UK. This is the first genuinely “virtual” royal tour; all footage of Windsor and his spouse attending Australian functions has been prepared in advance using the latest AI software to produce near-lifelike images of the couple greeting software-generated crowds trained on footage of eager Australians from previous royal visits.
